Strict Compliance, No Exceptions: Court of Appeals Keeps Judge Namita Sharma Off the November Ballot

What the panel actually decided

The legal question was narrow and the answer was narrower. Michigan election law requires candidates for elective office to file an affidavit of identity. That affidavit certifies, among other things, that the candidate’s committee has satisfied all campaign finance statements, fees, and fines. Sharma signed one. Three late filing fees, one from 2023 and two from 2024, totaling $2,025, were outstanding when she did.

Once that is established, MCL 168.558(4) does the rest. The provision directs an election official not to certify the name of a candidate whose affidavit contains a false statement. There is no discretion built into it, no proportionality test, and no de minimis exception for a small balance owed on a paperwork penalty. The panel put the standard plainly, writing that the statute “demands strict compliance.”

Sharma’s team did not seriously contest that the affidavit was inaccurate. The argument was structural instead: that an incumbent district judge should not have to file an affidavit of identity in the first place. That argument rested on the provision of the Michigan Constitution governing judicial candidacies, which names judges of the Court of Appeals, the circuit courts, and the probate courts. Sharma is a judge of the 8th District Court. She has presided over the Kalamazoo County Circuit Court family division since 2023, which she is permitted to do under the concurrent jurisdiction statute at MCL 600.401(2)(e), but presiding in the circuit court does not convert a district judge into a circuit judge. The panel found the carve out inapplicable and went further, holding that the affidavit requirement reaches all candidates for elective office in Michigan other than those running for president and vice president. A related argument grounded in the purity of elections clause was rejected outright.

The word that did the work: candidate

The most consequential move in this case is not the finding that the affidavit was false. It is the finding about when Sharma became a candidate.

Her remedy plan was reasonable on its face. After Director Brater’s May 2026 disqualification letter, she paid the $2,025, gathered signatures on nominating petitions, and told the Bureau she intended to re-file a corrected affidavit. The theory was straightforward: cure the defect, refile clean, appear on the ballot. Deputy Director Adam Fracassi rejected the petitions. When the new affidavit arrived in June 2026, the Bureau rejected that too.

The courts agreed with the Bureau. Sharma became a candidate when she filed the original affidavit. The disqualification attached to her status as a candidate, not to a particular piece of paper that could be swapped out. Having become a disqualified candidate, she could not become an eligible one by producing a second, accurate affidavit later in the cycle. The Bureau had also reclassified one of the two incumbent seats as a non-incumbent seat after her disqualification, which meant the petitions she circulated were pointed at a seat that no longer existed in the form she was seeking it.

Five notices, one committee, zero relays

The factual backstory is where the accountability question lives, and it is worth handling carefully because much of it comes from Sharma’s own pleadings and from statements by her counsel.

The Bureau of Elections says it sent notice of the deficiency to Sharma’s candidate committee five separate times between August 2023 and March 2025. That figure comes from the disqualification letter the Bureau provided to MLive. Sharma’s attorney has said that her committee treasurer, Heather Ricketts, never passed any of those notices along.

The complaint filed in June 2026 alleges more than a failure to forward mail. According to that filing, Sharma texted Ricketts in December 2025 to say she was about to file her incumbent affidavits, and Ricketts, aware of the unfiled reports and unpaid fees, told her to proceed. That allegation has not been adjudicated and Ricketts has not been a party to any determination of fault in this litigation. It is a claim, not a finding.

What this does to the Kalamazoo bench

Sharma’s current term expires January 1, 2027. Absent relief from the Michigan Supreme Court, she will leave the 8th District Court bench at the end of it, having been removed from the ballot rather than defeated at it.

The downstream electoral math is the part local voters should sit with. When Sharma filed, two incumbent district judges, Sharma and Judge Kathleen P. Hemingway, were running for two incumbent seats, and one non-incumbent seat had opened through the pending retirement of Judge Richard Santoni. After the disqualification, the Bureau converted one incumbent seat into a non-incumbent seat. Hemingway is now the sole incumbent seeking the sole incumbent seat. District Magistrate Mark Holsomback and Assistant Public Defender Rachel Vinales, who had been positioned to compete against one another for a single opening, now face two openings between the two of them. All three seats carry six year terms.

Three judgeships, three candidates, no contest. Whatever one thinks of the merits of the disqualification, an administrative determination about a campaign finance penalty has functionally resolved an entire county’s district court elections before a single vote is cast. That is not a criticism of the Bureau, which applied the statute it was handed. It is an observation about what the statute is capable of doing when it operates as written.

What is not resolved

Three things remain open, and it is worth naming them precisely rather than gesturing at them.

First, the Supreme Court appeal. Michigan’s appellate courts can move fast on election matters when they choose to, but ballot certification deadlines do not wait for anyone. The practical question is not only whether the Court takes the case but whether it can grant meaningful relief before the November ballot is finalized.

Second, the perjury exposure. Michigan election law provides that a false statement on an affidavit of identity may be prosecuted as perjury, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, up to five years of imprisonment, or both. There is no public indication that any charge has been sought or filed against Sharma, and nothing in the appellate record suggests intent. The provision exists, it has been repeatedly cited in coverage of this case, and it has not been invoked.

Third, and least discussed, is the professional dimension. A sitting judge signed a sworn document containing a false statement. The courts have now confirmed the statement was false. Whether the circumstances behind it, including a treasurer who allegedly withheld five notices, resolve the question of judicial responsibility is not something an election appeal was ever going to answer. That question belongs to a different forum, and as of publication no such proceeding is publicly known to exist.